Gift wrapping may be best left to the professionals

View full sizeGary Walts / The Post-StandardJeff Kramer decided one day that he needed to learn more about gift wrapping. He tried a stint at the holiday wrapping station operated by the Person To Person advocacy group at ShoppingTown Mall in DeWitt.He’s standing there in his glasses and overcoat, pretending he’s not watching me. But he is. Not just watching. Judging. My Scotch tape-covered ham fingers have given me away. I’m a gift-wrap fraud. We both know it. I’d be more qualified landing the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner in a blizzard than wrapping this rectangular kids’ game. Shiny paper and ribbon can hide a lot, but it can’t hide the stench of fear.

I’ve brought this misery on myself, naturally. Just like Tiger.

Last week I made my annual pilgrimage to ShoppingTown to have my presents professionally wrapped at the Person to Person booth. The nonprofit matches volunteers with people with disabilities throughout the community. It also operates the mall’s holiday gift-wrapping booth, the last, best hope for shoppers challenged by deficits of time and talent.

“It’s all men,” director Sue Farr said of the booth’s customer base, exaggerating only slightly. “They all say, ‘My wife or girlfriend will know I didn’t wrap this.’”

I’ve always been big on the booth. For $1 to $6 per gift, depending on its size, I walk out with expertly adorned packages and further distance myself from the Depression-era gift-wrapping tactics of my family of origin, which have been known to involve Reynolds Wrap and staples.

View full sizeGary Walts / The Post-StandardSue Farr (left), Person to Person's director, tried to help with a few lessons. But this year I couldn’t leave well enough alone. As the nice ladies at the booth wrapped my presents, I found myself lamenting the powerlessness of my dependency. One thing quickly led to another, and the next morning it was I who was behind the counter getting a quick tutorial from Sue before the mall opened.

Sue patiently told me the importance of removing the price tag and the need to correlate the amount of wrapping paper to the size of the object being wrapped. There was much talk of Scotch tape. For the first time, I began to understand that Scotch tape, though the gift-wrapper’s best friend, is not a substitute for ribbon. One must always use less tape than paper. Who knew?

View full sizeGary Walts / The Post-StandardKramer got the hang of it -- sort of -- but decided that perhaps some things should be left to professionals.As a trial run, Sue had me wrap an emergency road kit for her son-in-law. It was far from perfect; Sue assured me that it didn’t matter.

“He’s my son-in-law,” she deadpanned.

We moved on to actual customers. I struggled with my corners, getting them to lie flat, but there was improvement. After lunch, I did a decent job on a candle in a box, nudging the bow to one edge to obscure the part that looked like it had been mauled by a baboon. When I asked Norma, a volunteer with 50 years of wrapping experience, to rate my skill level, she described me as “a willing volunteer and a learner,” which is a polite way of saying: “Patient Should Not Be Left Alone With Sharp Objects.”

I’m OK with that because I’ve learned a valuable lesson. Society is forever pestering us to confront our fears and challenge our limitations. Society is wrong. Especially this time of year, it’s best to leave some boxes unopened.